food insecurity

Somalia is experiencing its worst drought for 40 years and there are warnings that millions of people need food assistance urgently. The UN body tasked with classifying levels of food security has projected a famine, although no official declaration has yet been made. We ask what data is used to formally categorise famine and explore some of the difficulties in collecting it, with the help of UN IPC Global Programme Manager Jose Lopez and Professor Laura Hammond, Pro Director of Research & Knowledge Exchange at SOAS.

Presenter & producer: Jon Bithrey Editor: Simon Watts Production Coordinator: Jacqui Johnson Sound Engineer: James Beard

(Image: People affected by the worsening drought due to failed rain seasons, look on, at the Alla Futo camp for internally displaced people, in the outskirts of Mogadishu, Somalia. REUTERS/Feisal Omar)

The pandemic, back to school, holidays around the corner.... our local food banks are constantly serving the community without a break.

On Ask the Expert, Cheryl "Action" Jackson with Minnie's Food Pantry, joined the KRLD Afternoon News to talk about the state of our local food banks.

In light of Samantha Bee's late night show being canceled, we are bringing back a classic of our Try To Laugh series. And I can assure you, laughing at a Samantha Bee joke is a lot harder than it looks...

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Conservative politicians have taken to the airwaves to tell us to forget the parties, and just look at the economic growth - but is the UK really growing faster than other leading economies?

The Omicron variant has raised the chance that people are re-infected with Covid - how common is that, and should it change the way we read the statistics that are reported each day?

The great statistician Sir David Cox has died; we remember his life and his contribution to the science of counting.

And does comparing the number of food banks to the number of McDonald’s restaurants in the UK tell us anything about food poverty?

How Nestlé executives, global health institutions and a very racist white lady seeded a series of nutritional misconceptions we're still living with today. 

Special thanks to John Nott for helping us out with this episode! Here's his papers on the history of protein and the British Empire.

• “No one may starve in the British Empire”: Kwashiorkor, Protein and the Politics of Nutrition Between Britain and Africa
• “How Little Progress”? A Political Economy of Postcolonial Nutrition

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Links!

• Cicely Williams’ dissertation
• Dariush Mozaffarian's "History of Modern Nutrition Science"
• The Incidence Of Protein-Calorie Malnutrition Of Early Childhood
• An Error of Medicine? Kwashiorkor and the “Protein Gap”
• Childhood Malnutrition In Developing Nations: Looking Back and Looking Forward
• The Politics of Protein
• The Impact of Colonialism on Health and Health Services in Tanzania
• Breast-Milk and the World Protein Gap
• The Influence of Colonialism on Africa’s Welfare: An Anthropometric Study
• Food, Colonialism and the Quantum of Happiness
• Revisited: Is Subclinical Protein Deficiency A Significant Public Health Concern?
• Listening to the Ga: Cicely Williams’ Discovery of Kwashiorkor on the Gold Coast
• “Milking the Third World: Humanitarianism, Capitalism and the Moral Economy of the Nestlé Boycott”
• The Controversy Over Infant Formula
• War on Want’s “The Baby Killer “
• 75 years of Kwashiorkor In Africa
• The Rise and Fall of Protein Malnutrition in Global Health

On a day early this fall, Nikita Stewart, who covers social services for The New York Times, and the Daily producers Annie Brown and Stella Tan spent a day at Council of Peoples Organization, a food pantry in Brooklyn, speaking to its workers and clients.

As with many other pantries in the city, it has seen its demand rocket during the pandemic as many New Yorkers face food shortages. And with the year drawing to a close, many of New York City’s pantries — often run with private money — face a funding crisis.

Today, the story of one day in the operations of a New York food pantry.

Guest: Nikita Stewart, who covers social services for The New York Times; Annie Brown, a senior audio producer for The Times; and Stella Tan, an associate audio producer for The Times.

We want to hear from you. Fill out our survey about The Daily and other shows at: nytimes.com/thedailysurvey

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

Background reading:

• Here are five key statistics that show how hunger is worsening in New York City.
• An estimated 1.5 million New Yorkers can’t afford food, and tens of thousands have shown up at the city’s food pantries since the pandemic began. But there is relief and hope when they are at home cooking.

NBA All-Star Stephen Curry discusses his mission to provide food security to as many children as possible through his charitable foundation Eat. Learn. Play.

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Covid-19 has shocked our food-supply system like nothing in modern history. We examine the winners, the losers, the unintended consequences — and just how much toilet paper one household really needs.